Bandmann, Minnie Palmer, Jean Davenport Lander, Mrs. F. M. Bates, Sallie A. Hinckley, Dion Boucicault, Katharine Rodgers, Helena Modjeska, and Rose Coghlan. Those, and many more, were not mere _names_ to Belasco: they were the vital, active personification of all that he most loved and desired--the Stage. The environment of his youth, allowing for all the trials and hardships to which incidentally he was subjected, must, obviously, have been conducive to the opening and enlightenment of his mind, the direction of his efforts into the theatrical field, the development of his latent powers, his education as actor, dramatist, and stage manager, and the building of his character. He was a sensitive, highly impressionable youth, possessed of an artistic temperament, romantic disposition, innate histrionic and dramatic faculties, ardent ambition to excel, eager interest in life, abundant capability of enjoyment, an almost abnormal power of observation,--that “clutching eye” which has been well ascribed to Dickens,--and a kindness of heart that made him instantly and eagerly sympathetic with every form of human trial and suffering. Such a youth could not fail to respond to some, at least, of the improving influences to which he was exposed. In the ministrations of such men and women as I have named he saw the rapid and splendid growth of the Theatre in California, the swift accession to the number of fine playhouses,--the building of Maguire’s Opera House (afterward the Bush Street Theatre), the California Theatre, Shiels’ Opera House, Maguire’s New Theatre, and Baldwin’s Academy of Music,--and with all of them, and with others, he became, at one time or another and in one way or another, connected. He was given exceptional and invaluable opportunities of studying the respective styles and learning the divergent methods of every class of actor and stage manager. He saw the thorough devotion, the patient endeavor, the astonishing variety, and the first splendid successes of John McCullough, who went to San Francisco with Edwin Forrest, in 1866, and there laid the foundation of his renown. He saw the intensely earnest, highly intellectual, incessantly laborious, passionately devoted and indomitable Lawrence Barrett, who made his first appearance in San Francisco, February 13, 1868, at Maguire’s Opera House, as _Hamlet_, and he saw many of the great plays, finely produced and nobly acted, which were given at the California Theatre, in the season when it was opened, January 11, 1869, under the joint management of Barrett and McCullough. Observance of such a dramatic company as those managers then assembled was in itself an education for any young enthusiast and student of the art of acting, and it is reasonable to believe that this youth profited by it. The company, certainly, was such a one as could not anywhere be assembled now, because most of the actors of that strain have passed away. Barrett held